A new blog post from the VOICES project, written by summer intern Sophie Erschen, explores the complexities of uncovering women’s wills from early modern Ireland and what they reveal about women’s lives, networks, and agency in a turbulent historical period.
During her internship with VOICES, Erschen explored a wide range of sources, from local history journals to 17th- and 18th-century will books in the National Archives of Ireland. The search was anything but straightforward. Many records were lost in the 1922 Public Record Office fire, and others were never recorded due to the instability of the era. What remains is often found in private or local collections, or in transcripts and summaries made before the fire.
Erschen reflects on the double-edged nature of this reliance: earlier historians serve as both “indispensable allies and nerve-wracking obstacles” in the recovery of women’s stories. Despite the gaps, VOICES is leveraging digital humanities tools and modern technologies to recover and interpret what survives, revealing new insights into women’s experiences in early modern Ireland.
VOICES, led by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer of Trinity College Dublin’s School of Histories and Humanities and funded by the European Research Council, continues to push the boundaries of historical research by combining scholarly expertise with digital innovation.
Read the full blog here: My Summer of Wills by Sophie Erschen
